Plastic in McDonald’s chicken not from Cargill, company says

Cargill stated that
after an exhaustive investigation, the company is confident the blue, plastic
foreign material recently reported in one McDonald's chicken nugget in Japan did
not originate from Cargill’s production facilities. The Cargill investigation
included physical analysis, chemical analysis, microscopic third-party lab
analysis and a step-by-step search across Cargill’s entire production facility.

Cargill had been cited
as a possible source for the plastic found in a chicken nugget as the fast food
chain had dealt with several reports of debris in its food at Japanese
locations. Cargill is a supplier for McDonald’s.

While Cargill
investigated multiple potential blue plastic materials found in their
production facilities and processes, chemical and physical analysis revealed
that the type of plastic found in the nugget does not exist in the Cargill
production plants in Thailand.

“Additional data points
revealed during the investigation such as; the length of the blue plastic film,
lab analysis results lacking clear indications associated with heating and a
review of the records of our Food Safety and Quality Assurance Programs suggest
that this plastic film found in the nugget was not impacted as would be expected
by our meat grinding and cooking processes. We are very confident that the
plastic film in the nugget occurred outside of our production plant.” stated
Chuck Warta, president, Cargill Meats Thailand.

Warta continued,” We are
always striving to reduce risks in our production processes. We are going
to increase our investments in additional x-ray machines and additional
resources at our visual inspection points at our Thailand facilities.”

“Producing safe,
high-quality food is our top priority. This means we must embrace every
issue as an opportunity to deeply review each step in our food production
processes to insure we deliver safe, delicious food to our customers and
consumers,” concluded Vares Ransibrahmanakul, Food Safety & Quality
Assurance director, Cargill Meats Thailand.